BASEBALL

BASEBALL; Mets Offer Ticket Prices To Suit Every Occasion

By RICHARD SANDOMIR

Published: November 27, 2002

Are all baseball teams created equal? Hardly. There are high-revenue and small-market teams, teams with superstars and teams with little identity. There are Yankees and Royals, BMW's and Hyundais.

If a 56-victory team from 2002 plays the Mets during the middle of the week next June, it is not as alluring as a 101-victory playoff club in for a weekend series.

That is the philosophy behind a four-tier ticket plan introduced by the Mets yesterday that raises prices the most for games against key opponents, usually on weekends, and lowers them against less successful teams on weeknights.

But there are nuances: a great team like the Atlanta Braves will cost more to watch on weekends than on weeknights, and a middling team like the Philadelphia Phillies has become a utilityman of sorts, the César Tovar of the schedule, moving through three ticket tiers depending on the date.

''We decided that the three principal factors that determine why a fan goes to a game are time of year, day of week and the opponent,'' said David Howard, the Mets' senior vice president for business. ''In the summer months, attendance rises with school out, then we see a difference in attendance for weekends than midweek, and there's a different demand for Yankees series than any other.''

The Mets' new plan could blunt the kind of criticism that usually greets increases in ticket prices for losing ball clubs because it preserves last season's ticket prices for 27 games and cuts the prices for 16 others.

''The more we studied it, the more it made sense to tailor pricing to match demand as much as possible,'' Howard said.

Under the plan, four categories of tickets are established.

*The Gold Plan covers 17 dates, including opening day against the Chicago Cubs; weekend series against Atlanta, Seattle, the Yankees and St. Louis; and a midweek series against San Francisco and Barry Bonds. The peak ticket price of $53, for inner-field boxes, is $10 more than it was last season. The cheap seats rise to $16 from $12.

*The 21-game Silver Plan includes weekend series against Arizona, Philadelphia, Cincinnati and Colorado, and two midweek series against Atlanta. The top price rises $5 to $48, and the lowest price goes up $2 to $14.

*The Bronze Plan, for 27 dates, preserves the most expensive seat at $43 and the cheapest one at $12, for midweek games against Chicago, Los Angeles, Florida, Montreal and Milwaukee, and weekend games against Montreal and San Diego.

*The Value Plan, for 16 games, discounts the top seat to $38, and the least expensive one to $8, for midweek series against Houston, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Florida and Pittsburgh.

Fitting each series into the categories was handled by the Mets' ticket department, with Howard's input. ''There wasn't a lot of debate,'' he said. ''A few series could have gone either way. But mainly it broke out cleanly.''

By moving to variable pricing, the Mets are following the lead of the Cubs, Colorado, Cleveland and San Francisco.

Howard said the Mets hiked the average ticket price by 4 percent, and, if attendance equals last season's 2.8 million -- wishful thinking, perhaps, for a 75-86 club -- revenues should increase by a similar amount.

''I think it's the wave of the future because it makes economic sense,'' Dan Migala, executive editor of Team Marketing Report, said of the Mets' strategy. ''It maximizes revenues yet it doesn't alienate fans who don't have a huge wallet to draw upon. In years past, you saw price increases running across the board, but now there's a lot more sophistication.''

He said variable pricing was being tinkered with in the N.H.L. but is unlikely to be adopted by the N.F.L. or the N.B.A.

Within baseball, variable pricing is executed in different ways. The Giants add $1 to $5 to the cost of ticket prices for games played on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. The Cardinals add $1 to ticket prices for all games from May 31 to Sept. 7.

In a more elaborate way, the Cubs announced a three-level season ticket plan last week. Eight value dates for afternoon games from April 9 to May 7 are the cheapest (the best club box is $18). Nineteen prime games -- for opening day and all Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from June 6 to Aug. 17 -- are the most expensive (the club box is $45). And for the remaining 54 dates, fans will pay $36 for the club box.

The Yankees brought flexibility to their ticket pricing for 2003. While adding $2 to $10 to the cost of ticket prices (the most expensive seat will now be $72), they also designated eight games in which 24,616 seats in the upper deck would be sold for $5 each.

In the type of front-office handicapping behind the Mets' variable-pricing plan, the Mets are risking that a ''gold'' team like the Giants will falter and be overpriced, or that a value-plan club like the Brewers will rise out of 56-106 ignominy.

Howard said the Mets would not raise, or lower, the price of unsold tickets depending on the fortunes of teams as the 2003 season proceeds.

The Mets also risk that opponents finding themselves in the bronze and value categories will post the discount prices for their games on a clubhouse bulletin board and hope it will create a room full of angry players who don't like to be relegated to Filene's Basement.

General Manager Dave Littlefield of the Pirates, a team Mets fans will be able to see for bargain prices, said: ''I don't worry about those types of things. We have to spend our energies improving our club. Whatever games they choose for discounting is their decision.''